Matthew 5:6

 

“Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”

 

Mankind has a basic unfulfilled hunger and thirst in life

 

“As we study the book of Matthew, we’re in Matthew chapter 5, we’re looking at the Sermon on the Mount, and we’ve come to the 4th Beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, Matthew chapter 5, verse 6.  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  Only those who hunger and thirst for this righteousness will be satisfied.  It doesn’t say ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for anything else will be satisfied.’  It’s only for righteousness.  There’s only satisfaction in this life, in hungering and thirsting for righteousness.  Where does the satisfaction come from?  It comes from Jesus [Yeshua to our Hebrew friends], because he is righteousness.  He is our righteousness, imputed to us, placed on our account, he is the Righteous and Holy One, and you could really, I believe, read this and not do any harm to the passage by saying “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after Jesus, for they shall be satisfied.”  There’s a basic hungering and thirsting in everyone’s life, and I don’t think it can be satisfied without the Lord Jesus.  People are dying for God’s Word, and don’t even know it.  Amos 8:11 says “Behold days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord.”  I believe that we are in a day like that, when people are hungering and thirsting, in fact, they’re dying, they’re in a famine right now.  And it’s a famine for something they don’t know.  They don’t know what they really need, and they don’t know what they really want, but they have this hungering and craving and gnawing in their hearts.  And people try to fill it with everything, and we see it all around us, and maybe you’re even toying with it and playing with it.  Try to fill it with people, with things, with drugs, with illicit relationships, there’s all sorts of things you can try to fill this hungering and thirsting in your life with.  And you know what?  It won’t be satisfied.  You can work for stuff, as some of you have, and you find out that when you get there, it’s a tremendous bummer, because that wasn’t it.  I think that’s the reason for a lot of mid-life crisis, is that people get to sort of the high-point where they’re going to be in their life, and they discover ‘This is not it.  I shot and I aimed for this, and I got what I aimed for, but it’s not where I want to be.’  And there’s this emptiness on the inside.  And you know, it’s not just an American thing, it’s in any society that you go to, it’s in any culture that you go to.  People are looking for something, they are hungry on the inside, and it’s a hunger for God, it’s a famine for the Word of God. 

 

Only God can satisfy this basic hunger and thirst found within mankind, and each of us

 

Would you look at Isaiah chapter 55 with me.  You’re Bible, go to the left to the book of Isaiah chapter 55, the first verse.  There is this great invitation here given in Isaiah, and here the prophet, the Lord speaks to the prophet and he says “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and drink.”  Hey, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters “And you who have no money, come, buy and eat.  Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without cost.  Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not---what?---satisfy?  Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance.  Incline your ear and come to me.  Listen, that you may live, and I’ll make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercy shown to David.”  “The Lord says” verse 6, “seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.  Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.  And let him return to the Lord, and he will have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”  Isn’t this great?  God’s saying ‘I know you’re thirsty, you’re not surprising me at all with your hunger and thirst.  In fact, I created it in you.’  Why would you create it in us God?  It’s sort of God’s way of drawing us to himself.  He created us so that we wouldn’t be satisfied, we wouldn’t be filled, we wouldn’t be complete until we have him in our lives, and only have him.  Nobody else is going to satisfy.  That’s why Jesus could say “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”   John 6:35  ‘I’m the bread of life, I’m the food that life’s made of, I’m what you’re looking for, and if you’ll eat and drink of my life, you’ll be satisfied.’  In John 7, verse 3 in the great Feast of Tabernacles, there is a great procession and a lot of shouting and singing going on in the Temple courts in the fall, so it’s still  warm outside, and all the people were dry-mouthed from praising the Lord, and yet there was a moment of silence, and everybody just sort of stops, and there’s this moment of silence.  And after all this shouting and praising there’s this ‘silence’---and at that moment Jesus cried out and he said “If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.”  Well that’s interesting because everybody there was thirsty at that point, everyone was thirsty.  Jesus recognizes that in our lives.  He says, ‘I know you’re thirsty.’  The Bible ends with this invitation, in Revelation 22, here is the invitation that God gives, “And the Spirit and the Bride say Come, and let him who hears say Come, and let the one who is thirsty come.”  ‘Let the one who wishes to take the Water of Life without cost come.’  Jesus invites you to come and drink, if you never have before, to drink of the water of life, to drink freely.  You can’t pay for this.  There’s no way that you can buy this.  I think Isaiah 55 is sort of interesting, he says ‘He, everybody whose thirsty come to the waters, come buy, but it doesn’t cost you anything.’  What does this mean?  The Word says there’s a big price to it, but the price has already been paid.  Jesus Christ has paid the price so that you can have your need satisfied, so that you can have the life that you need, so that you can have your hunger and your thirst, which is not going to be satisfied anywhere else, satisfied in him. 

 

How long are you going to try to satisfy your hunger and thirst with the things of the world?

 

And how long---I wasn’t really intending to do this, but I know I’m talking to some folks right now, really, and you know who you are, ‘How long are you going to be trying to satisfy your hunger and thirst with other things?’  I mean, how long does it take you to realize ‘This is a dead-end?’, how long does it take?  How many things do you have to stuff into your life, and hurt yourself and abuse yourself with, until you’re realize, look, I’m headed the wrong way, I’ve got to turn around?  Why, if I told you, your hunger and thirst would be satisfied in some kind of a marketing scheme, how many of you might get involved?  Or if I told you that your hunger and thirst could be satisfied in a certain part of the country, go live there---you might move there, because that’s how desperate you are---but when I offer you the free gift of life in Christ, you balk, you go ‘Oh, Mmmm...no’.  Why?  Could it be that there’s a plot to destroy you, could it really be that there is an enemy to your soul that wants to destroy you, and wants you to starve to death, so that you die of thirst spiritually, so to speak?  I think so.  I know so.  I’d like us to bow our heads right now.  Close your eyes.  The Bible says that right here, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.  Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man”---or woman---“his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord.”  Is that you?  God’s calling you right now to himself.

 

An invitation

 

“Call upon the Lord while he may be found.”  Right now God can be found, if you will call on him.  ‘Forsake your wicked ways.’  Some of you need to return to the Lord, you’ve backslidden, you need to come back to the Lord.  And God’s heart is this towards you, he will have compassion, and he will abundantly pardon you.  That’s what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about.  God will abundantly pardon you.  It’s not an accident that you’ve been brought here tonight, you’ve come here tonight.  Jesus Christ ordained this moment so that you might be saved.  Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved, the Bible says.  Don’t harden your heart.  You’re being offered the Drink of Life, you’re being offered the Bread of Life.  The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23).  Now, how about it?  Let’s call on his name.  The way we do that is through prayer.  Maybe you don’t even know how to pray, so I’m going to pray a simple prayer, and I’m going to ask you silently, just between you, me and the Lord, I’m going to ask you silently to pray this prayer, just phrase by phrase after me.  And we’re going to ask Jesus Christ to come into your life, and satisfy this need.  Why should we go any farther tonight, until your need is satisfied?  That would be cruel, for us to be feasting on Bread that you don’t have.  And so God has brought you to this moment.  Father I pray in Jesus name that you would grant faith, that you would bring into the Kingdom those whom you’ve ordained before the foundation of the world to be saved, and you’ve brought here this moment.  And Lord we ask that you would bring them to yourself.  Lord, move upon their hearts, let them know how much they’re loved by you, how much compassion you’ll have on them, how much pardon you’ll offer, in Jesus name.  Now with your heads bowed and your eyes closed, Jesus said ‘Whoever will come to me I’ll never ever cast away.’  Jesus will forgive anything you’ve ever done.  And if you’ll accept him as your Savior, you can have all your sins forgiven, you can even know that if you were to die tonight you’d go to be with the Lord…you’ll have that emptiness, that hunger filled with Jesus Christ.  This is what eternal life is all about.  Call on him now with me, will you?  I’m going to pray this prayer, I’m going to ask you, silently, to pray after me, phrase by phrase.  Pray with me now.  ‘Father in heaven, I thank you for your love to me.  I am hungry, and I’m thirsty.  Please, give me the gift of eternal life.  I confess that I’m a sinner.  I’ve tried so many other things.  Nothing has satisfied.  I need you.  I believe that Jesus died for my sins, and that he rose again.  And I accept him as my Savior.’  Please keep your eyes closed and your heads bowed.  If you prayed that prayer, I want to welcome you to the family of God, because you are a child of God now.  The Bible said that ‘As many as received him’ and that’s what you’ve just done, ‘he gave the right to become the children of God.’  You’re a child of God.  Wow.  Now, being a child of God doesn’t mean that you’re gonna be perfect.  You’re gonna make mistakes and all, but I want you to know, God will never cast you away.  Jesus will never forsake you.  He’ll never ever leave you.  The One who rose from the dead is everliving to make intercession for you.  You don’t understand everything yet about the Christian life, that’s for sure.  But I want to pray for you, that you will grow in your Christian life, that you’ll grow.  Perhaps you’ve recommitted your life, as the verse said, ‘Let us return to the Lord.’  Everybody’s got their eyes closed, their heads bowed, between you, me and the Lord, I want to pray for you, but I want to see you, so what I’m going to ask you to do is not to stand up, not to come forward, there’s not even room to come forward.  I’m going to ask you to raise your hand if you prayed that prayer, raise your hand right now.  So keep your hands up so I can acknowledge them, nobody’s looking but me, I see you, I see you, and you, and you, and I see you, I see you, and I see you, and I see you.  Keep your hands up high, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, and you, I see you, I see you, keep them up high, ok, I’m halfway, I see you and you and you, I see you, I see you, and I see you, I see you, man, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you and I see you, I see you, I see you way in the back.  Ok, put your hands down.  That’s wonderful [applause].  Let me pray for you, ‘Father in heaven, I just thank you, for all these precious men and women that you have brought into your Kingdom, or you have brought back to yourself tonight.  Lord it just touches my heart, your grace, your goodness, Lord.  I thank you for their lives, they’re so precious, you love them so much Lord.  And I pray that they’ll just grow, to know how much you love them, that they will grow to know that they are the objects of all of heaven’s interests, that you have the very, all their days numbered Lord, that there’s nothing that can happen to them that you’re not in control of.  Lord thank you for giving them eternal life, and I pray that you will shelter them from the fiery missiles of the enemy.  Lord, help them to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in Jesus name we pray, and everybody said, AMEN.’ [applause]   Welcome to God’s family.  God is so awesome, I’m so excited for you guys!  I really am, I have something really special for you before we end. [Comment: 29 new members were just added to the body of Christ (and to Calvary Community Church, in Phoenix, AZ) just then.  That is really something.  The Beatitudes are really all about how a person is drawn to Jesus Christ, and as you’ve seen in this series, it’s a spiritual process we all go through, a process of first, recognition of who we are, what we are, then a mourning about what we see we are, and then a hunger and thirst for righteousness, the very righteousness of Jesus, and then coming to the Lord, seeking his righteousness, not our own.  And then as verse 6 says, we become filled with that righteousness that’s not our own.]   Let’s go on with the message now. 

 

We have a need for intimacy with the Lord

 

Now the rest of this will make sense to a good portion of you.  OK?  Now listen closely, those of you who’ve just accepted the Lord, or those who’ve rededicated your lives to Christ.  We who have come to know the Lord, have an intense need now for intimacy with the Lord that can’t be satisfied with anything else but intimacy with the Lord.  And this is the missing ingredient, if you will, in a lot of Christian lives, is this lack of intimacy with the Lord.  Fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ is absolutely vital for your Christian walk.  Look at Psalm 42, and if you see somebody who doesn’t quite know where they’re going in the Bible, why don’t you invite yourself to help them.  Does that make sense?  Why don’t you say ‘Can I show you where we’re going?’ or something like that.  And that’s cool, nobody needs to feel embarrassed about not knowing their way around the Scriptures, a lot of new believers around here that don’t know their way either.  OK?  So Psalm chapter 42, verse 1, look at how David, now this, David knows the Lord, David loves the Lord, David’s grown up in the Lord, if you will.  But listen to his experience as a man in God, as a man in the Lord he says “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for thee O God.”  Do you get this idea, here’s a deer that’s maybe been hunted, and it’s being hunted and running and running, and it’s just, it needs a drink, and it’s looking and longing for this water brook.  Have you ever been thirsty like that?  “As the deer longs for the water, so my soul pants for thee O God.”  My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God, this is what we need, as believers.  You know, if things aren’t quite going right in your Christian life, look at what you’re drinking.  Are you drinking from the River of Life?  ‘My soul thirsts for God’.  I don’t need more seminars, I don’t need more of anything but the Lord.  My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God.  “When shall I come and appear before God? my tears have been my food day and night” he says.  ‘This is what I need, he says, I know the answer is just more of the Lord.  I’m hungry, I’m thirsting for him.’  Look at Psalm 63, verses 1 and 2, David writes again this song “Oh God, thou art my God, I shall seek thee early.”  In other words, God was the first appointment in his date-book.  OK?  “My soul will wait for you, Lord, I shall seek thee earnestly [Hebrew: “early”], my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.  Thus I’ve beheld you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory, because your loving kindness is better than life.  My lips will praise thee, so I will bless thee as long as I live.  I will lift up my hands in thy name.  My soul is satisfied with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.”  [Comment:  “I shall seek thee early” refers to David getting up before dawn for his prayer and Bible study, a habit of having his spiritual breakfast even before his physical one. This habit of spiritual feeding and nourishment can make a Christian strong.]  He realizes that the need of his heart is having more of the Lord.  ‘I need to feast on you, Lord, I need to drink of your water, Lord.’  David says in Psalm 84, 1 and 2 “How lovely are thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts.  My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord.  My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the Living God.”  Have you ever yearned to be around the people of God?  Ever been in a crummy place where there wasn’t decent fellowship, and you just, ‘Oh man, I just want to be with God’s people!’  David was that way, he was exiled for a long time.  And he says ‘Oh, I need, I want worship, I want intimacy with God, I want to drink from that River of intimacy, I want to be in the worship place.’  I came across this, you know, I’ve read this book of Isaiah, and I don’t remember reading this, but Isaiah the prophet records Israel is saying, listen, just listen, and I’ll give you the reference a the end.  “We have waited for you eagerly, your name, even your memory is the desire of our souls.”  Isn’t that cool?  “We have waited for you eagerly, your name, even your memory is the desire of our souls.  At night, my soul longs for you, indeed my spirit within me seeks you diligently.”  I love that.  He says, ‘You know, this is the way it is with us.  Lord, your name, even your memory, your memory is the desire of our soul,  Isaiah 26:8-9, that’s Isaiah 26,  verses 8 and 9.  Now we’ve got to look this one up, Psalm 36, look at this.  We’ll start with the 7th verse of this Psalm.  Another psalm written by David, and he says in verse 7, “How precious is your lovingkindness, O God.  And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of thy wings.”  This is this picture of God being our great heavenly covering, like the prayer-shawl that the Jewish men would wear [when they pray].  [Also General “Stonewall” Jackson would wear a prayer-shawl at times, when he prayed, even before a battle.]  And he’s saying, ‘I’d love to come under your prayer-shawl.’  Or it’s a picture of how a mother bird will protect her little eaglets under her wings, or her little chicks under her wings…and he says, verse 8, read with me out loud, “They drink their fill of the abundance of thy house, and thou dost give to them the drink of the river of thy delights, for with thee is the fountain of life.  In thy light we see light.  They drink their fill of the abundance your house.”  God is offering us, daily, the abundance of his house.  Think of that, about the stock that God has stored up for you, every day.  Think about how much we don’t take advantage of.  I was standing, I had the most awesome worship experience in San Diego.  In fact, I think I should be sent there every week to worship the Lord [laughter].  Does a lot for me, spiritually.  But I had that awesome song, what was the song that I had on?  ‘Shout to the Lord, all the earth let us sing, power and majesty, praise to the king, mountains bow down, and the sea will roar, at the sound of your name.’  I had that cranked on a ghetto-blaster, was sitting on a rock, and the waves were crashing on, and I’m not kidding, gang, in my time of intimacy with the Lord, do you know what he did for me?  I was sitting there, and I had that cranked, and I was lifting my hands, and I said ‘Lord, could you just let these waves sing your praise too?’  I am not kidding, those waves started doing their thing right in rhythm with the music.  Don’t laugh, my daughter [laughter], they did it for me, and my daughter, Emily, came up to me, and I was worshipping the Lord, and I brought her along with me, and I said ‘Honey, this is awesome, look at what the Lord’s doing for me.’  And I said ‘Jesus is bringing his praise into the waves’, and she says ‘Wow!’  And I said listen.  And we started listening, and as it sang ‘My Jesus, dah, dah, dah, Lord there is none like you,’ that was sort of quiet, and the waves were quiet, and then all of a sudden as it began to build, the waves began to build, and it began to go ‘Shout to the Lord’, and when it said ‘Shout’ the waves just crashed.  And this had not been happening before, I had been watching the waves for twenty minutes and it never happened.  But when it said ‘Power and majesty to the king’, and when it hit ‘power’, and when the song said ‘Power’, and the waves probably went up fifteen feet in the air, ‘Power’ crash!, just like that, and ‘majesty’ crash!, he did it again.  I’m going ‘Whoa’, and Emily’s going “Wow Daddy!  Jesus is really letting the ocean praise him!”  And it was just incredible.  It was awesome.  Oh, and it was at that moment, that the Lord spoke to my heart something I want to share, and it was that there are oceans of mercies, oceans of power, oceans of grace available for me.  And I wanted to come home and share it with you when the time was right, you know, when it would come up at the right time, that God has oceans of mercies for you.  God has oceans of supplies worth of grace for you, oceans of strength for you, saints.  We don’t even take the little thimbleful sometimes, when there is this vast supply that God has waiting for us.  Partake of it.  See how much you can use up of God’s grace [not by going on a sinning spree, that’s not what he means] and mercy and love and all of his supply in this lifetime, see if you can empty the ocean.  How precious is thy lovingkindness O God.  “And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of thy wings, and drink their fill of the abundance of thy house”, huge abundance there, “and thou dost give to them to drink of the river of thy delights.”  God has a river of delights.  Interesting, the word “delights” is eden, EDEN in Hebrew…delights.  God has an Eden for you.  Are you entering into that in intimacy with the Lord?  The word can mean “delicacies”.  God has delicacies for you, have you tasted of them?  Have you seen how good the Lord is lately?  Are you so busy that when your feet hit the floor, it’s off you go, and you wonder why you’re weak?  You wonder why you’re tired, you wonder why sin gets the victory over you?  You know, it could be you just need time with him, and you need his power and strength revitalizing your life.  I get weak and shaky when I need to eat.  My hands start shaking, like they are now, because I didn’t eat, because I need food.  But even more than that, I get weak and shaky when I don’t spend time with the Lord, because I need Jesus, because I’m a Christian, and Christians [or Messianic Jewish believers in Jesus] don’t live well without him.  We have to have him, he is our life.  He is our life.  Well, you know what?  I’m not going to get through this, we’re going to have to do part II next week, because I’ve got a lot of good stuff here, so how about coming back and we’ll finish it later, alright?  Let’s pray…

 

Part II

 

“Matthew chapter 5, we begin with verse 6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  Only those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be satisfied.  I mean, that’s implied right there.  If you don’t hunger and thirst for it, you’re never going to have the satisfaction that it alone can bring.  Righteousness is a Person, Jesus, Yeshua.  You could read it like this, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after Jesus, for they shall be satisfied.”  Only Jesus Christ satisfies.  There’s a basic hunger and thirst in every person’s life.  And that hunger and thirst is for Jesus Christ, and it is as real in the spiritual realm as hungering and thirsting, of hunger for food and thirst for water is in the physical realm.  Just as your body has those desires that have to be supplied in order for you to live, even so, in order for you to live and be alive to God you have to know Jesus Christ.  People are dying for God’s Word, and they don’t even know it.  Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life, he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”   Christians, not just the world, but Christians are drying up for a lack of the “water of life.”  Ian Blakelock tells of the incredible incident that occurred during the liberation of Palestine in World War I.  The Allied British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers were closely pursuing the Turks, driving them out of Palestine, and the Turks were retreating into the desert.  And so the Allied troops were pursuing them, but the pursuit was so hot that they left behind their camel water-train.  And so they got out there a couple days away from their water supply, and they knew that they were going to be in trouble.  The men’s lips began to crack, they began to swell, they began to see mirages, they were dying.  Hundreds of them died.  And they knew that unless they got to the Wells of Shuria they would die.  And so they made this incredible march, dragging each other along, pulling one another, trying to keep those barely alive, alive, fighting for their very lives against the enemy.  And finally they did, capture the Wells of Shuria, and when they arrived the water began to be distributed to those who were the weakest first.  And it took four long hours for the water to finally get to those who were standing guard over those who were weak.  They stood there, absolutely dying for a drop of water.  They stood there, just 20 feet away from thousands of gallons of water, but they couldn’t do anything.  They stood there, waiting for the order to go for the water.  It’s said that one of the officers who was present reported, I quote, “I believed that we all learned our first real Bible lesson on the march from Beersheba to Shuria Wells.  If such were our thirst for God, for righteousness and for his will in our lives, a consuming, all-embracing, preoccupying desire, how rich in the fruit of the Spirit would we be”, end quote.  You know, maybe what’s driving you into sin is really a thirst for God.  I mean, think of it.  You know, you’re pursuing stuff, you’re pursuing the world, you’re going for everything but God.  Have you ever stopped to think that maybe all that energy is really looking for God?  And you can be a Christian and have this kind of problem.  We who have come to know the Lord have an intense need for intimacy with the Lord that cannot be satisfied with anything else.  That’s the missing ingredient in so many Christian lives.  Fellowship with the Lord Jesus is so vital for us.  Psalm 42, verses 1 and 2 expresses it so well.  As you recall, it says “As the deer pants for the waters, so my soul longs for thee, O God, in a dry and thirsty land.”  Psalm 63, verses 1 and 2 says, “O God, thou art my God, I shall seek thee earnestly [Hebrew: early].  My soul thirsts for thee, my flesh yearns for thee in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”  Now because hungering and thirsting is not a one-time event---right?---we have to pursue after these things.  It’s not ‘Once quenched, always quenched’, is it?  We have to eat, and eat another time, and eat another time.  And I wish we didn’t have to eat, I don’t like eating, but we have to eat.  We have to take the time to eat.  I’d rather not do it, I’d just rather go and forget about it, maybe eat once in a while, just for the fun of it.  But we have a continual need to be nourished, to receive food and water.  And the Lord is saying here that we have a continual need to be satiated, to be filled and satisfied with him.  [Comment: that is why having daily prayer and Bible study, first thing in the day, is so essential for the believer in Jesus, Yeshua.]

 

Why the Lord called us to himself

 

The Lord designed us for fellowship with himself.  We were not just saved to serve.  Have you ever heard that?  I’ve heard preachers say, I heard it when I was a newborn Christian, ‘Well, we’re saved to serve.’  And the finger was sort of wagging at me, you know.  ‘You need to serve the Lord, because you were saved to serve.’  You know, I don’t know that the Bible ever really says that.  Service is important, it’s an important aspect in my following after the Lord and my love for Jesus Christ, but we were actually saved because God wanted fellowship with us.  He wasn’t looking for servants.  He didn’t have an ad out in the paper saying “I need slaves, would you like to sign up?  And I’ll save you.”  Instead, we were saved for fellowship.  Look at 1st Corinthians 1, 1st Corinthians chapter 1, verse 9.  I cannot get away from this book of 1st Corinthians, we’re starting over again in chapter 1, this is scary.  Let’s read it out loud, I’ll give you a moment to get there.  1st Corinthians chapter 1, verse 9.  But again, God didn’t save us because he wanted to get something out of us.  You see, his love and grace towards us is not that way.  It is much fuller and much greater than that.  He saved us because he likes us.  ‘What?  No way, God couldn’t like me.’  Honest, God loves you.  You know, we can say “God loves you.”  And we think ‘God has to love you.’  That’s a mistake too, by the way.  God doesn’t have to love you.  Why does God love you?  Because you’re so lovable?  [laughter, chuckles]  I know some of you think you are, but you’re not.  [laughter]  Nope, he loves you because he’s chosen to, because he is so loving.  God is love.  That’s why he loves you, and me.  But, you know, I can say ‘Well I love so and so.’  But do you “like” them?  See how the word “like” is sort of different.  As a Christian I have to love everybody, right?  But I don’t like everybody.  [laughter]  You know, there’s my circle of friends, and you know, ugh, I don’t really like them, I love them in the Lord [chuckles], ‘I love you in the love of the Lord’, we can sing that song, but we don’t sing ‘I like you’.  [laughter]  We don’t sing that.  Like to us almost means more than love, because the word “love” has gotten cheap.  But look at what the Word says about God and why he saved us, verse 9, read it out loud with me.  “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”  We were called, we were saved, to have what?  Yeah, that’s it gang, we were saved to have fellowship with Jesus Christ.  God wanted our friendship, God wanted our fellowship, he desires it.  Really.  God calls us into fellowship.  The [Greek] word is Koinenion, which means the enjoyment or realization of companionship or fellowship.  Companionship, you could read it, you could say “who has called us into companionship with his Son.”  A companion is a close friend, it’s an intimate friend.  That’s the kind of fellowship that the Lord has called us into.  Look at the special promise in Psalm 25:14 that God has for us…Keep this idea, this truth that God wants your friendship, that God wants your fellowship-companionship, OK.  Keep that idea, that he likes you.  You know, maybe you don’t like yourself.  And you know what will change that?  Understanding that God likes you. You know, we can get ourselves into a whole lot of bad kind of sinful behavior because we don’t see ourselves the way God sees us.  A very healthy Christian will see himself the way God sees him or her, and God likes you. 

 

God Called us so he could share his secrets with us

 

Look at Psalm 25:14, “The secret of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he will make them know his covenant.”  The word “secret” is the Hebrew word cowd [Strongs Hebrew # 5475, cowd (pronounced sode); a session, company of persons (in close deliberation; by impl. Intimacy, consultation, a secret:-assembly, counsel, inward, secret.]  The word secret is the Hebrew word cowd (pronounced sode), which means, literally “a couch or a cushion”.  A what?  It’s a pillow.  It’s a couch.  It was called the triclinium, it was sort of like the couch that was around the table, you know, there’d be one for you, one for the next person, all the way around he table.  They didn’t sit at tables and chairs, OK, that came much later.  In Biblical times they sat around on pillows, on cushions around the common table, and they dipped their food in and ate together, and the men would eat all by themselves, and the women would eat by themselves, and it would be an intimate close little thing, you’d exchange ideas and exchange secrets and fellowship.  And you have to understand that in Middle Eastern terms that if you ate with somebody, you were saying “We’re friends for life.”  If someone came into your home and ate with you, and an enemy attacked, you would defend them even before your own family, because you had broken bread together, you had dipped into the same food and the same food that was in you was in them, and you had a common life now together.  Now this is incredible, because it says “the secret, the pillow, the couch of the Lord is for those who fear him, who are in awe of him.”  God is saying to us, that “The intimate circle where secrets are shared among friends is ours for the asking.”  We can be his intimate, his friend, the one that he wants to sit and eat with!  I mean, this fleshed out when Christ came to the earth, didn’t it.  And there he ate with his disciples, and he shared with them.  And doesn’t it make sense now why after his resurrection, he was even cooking meals for them [cf. John 21:1-14], right?  He was a bread baker and a fish cooker.  [laughter]  Remember there, after in Galilee, when he met them, they saw him on the shore, and he’d cooked the breakfast for them?  Because, the cowd [sode] of the Lord, the secret of the Lord is for those who fear him.  Do you get what we are saying?  God has counsel, secrets, to share with you, that he won’t share with anybody else.  He wants to bring you into his intimate circle, he wants to share with you things that he won’t share those who do not desire this intimacy with him.  You wonder, ‘How does somebody get this stuff?’  You read a book, how do they get this?  You know what?  They sat down at the table with the Lord.  And the Lord revealed these things.  I mean, it’s not extra-Biblical knowledge that he shares with us, but he opens his Word to us [i.e. he opens our understanding of what his Word is actually saying].  Sometimes God will even give you his heart, you’ll just feel the heart of God for a person or a situation or a city, or a ministry, he will just give you his heart, and you’ll realize, and you’ll wonder, ‘What is going on with me?  Why am I so concerned?  Why do I have this burden?’  And it’s the heart of God in your life. 

 

The example of Abraham backs this up

 

Think of Abraham.  Look at Genesis 18:16.  Abraham in Genesis 18:16 had been visited by the LORD [Yahweh, the one who became Yawheh-shua, contracted to Yeshua, known by his Greek name of Jesus.]  It says in verse 1, ‘The LORD appeared to him in the oaks of Mamre, and the LORD appeared with two others”, and as they were about to leave Abraham, verse 16 says “the men arose up from there and looked down towards Sodom, and Abraham was walking with them to send them off, and the LORD,” and this is interesting, it is the sacred name, “and Yahweh said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.  For I have chosen him in order that he may command his children in his household after him to keep the way of the LORD, by doing righteousness and justice, in order that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he has spoken about him.’”  The LORD’s saying to him, ‘Should I share with Abraham what I’m about to do?’  Oh, whoa, I would love it if God would say about me, ‘Oh, Gabe, whoever’s in heaven, Michael, should I share with Mark what I’m about to do?’  ‘Yeah!, yeah, tell me!’  Of course Abraham was totally oblivious of what was about to happen, what was on the heart of God, what was on the heart of God towards him.  Now why would God say such a thing?  Why would God say “Should I tell Abraham what I’m about to do”?  It’s because according to the book of James chapter 2, verse 23, “Abraham was the friend of God.”  Abraham was God’s friend, Abraham was God’s friend.  There are two other times in Scripture that Abraham is called God’s friend, I’ll just read them for you, you can write the references, 2nd Chronicles 20, verse 7, king Jehoshaphat is praying “Didst thou not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel and give it to the descendants of Abraham thy friend forever.”  And then again in Isaiah 41:8, Abraham is called “the friend of God.”   The word friend in Hebrew is aheb, which means “to love”, it comes from the root word “to love.”  “Beloved” it can mean, or “dearly loved.”  Or it can even mean “lover”, pushed to it’s intimate context.  “The friend”, isn’t it interesting how my best, best, best friend in all the world would be my lover, my wife, on this earth?  But the lover of my soul is my best friend, Jesus Christ.  ‘Abraham’s my friend!  I want to tell my friend what I’m about to do.’  And so the Lord walks a ways, and sure enough, in Genesis 18, he tells him, in verse 20, “The LORD said, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave, I will go down now and see if they’ve done entirely according to its outcry which is come up to me.’”  And he let’s Abraham know that he’s going to destroy the cities down there, Sodom and Gomorrah.  Now he didn’t have to do that, but he wanted to, because Abraham was his friend.  Now does God Almighty need a buddy?  Does he need a friend?  I don’t think so.  But this is the great grace and condescension of our Lord, that he comes to us, and desires this relationship with us.  I would never, ever, ever think that God would want to be my friend.  I mean, can you imagine thinking that, if it were not revealed in Scripture?  Wouldn’t that be a little irreverent, wouldn’t it be absolutely unthinkable?  How can you do that?  How can you even mention it, because I could not initiate friendship with God.  It would have to come from him, because he is the greater.  You can say, I don’t even want to make that analogy, I was going to say “Bill Clinton’s friend” [loud laughter].  There’s no comparison, you know.  I was trying to think of somebody, say the Queen of England’s friend, and you want to be her friend.  Well, you can write a letter, ‘Dear Liz’, you know,  ‘would you please be my friend?’ and don’t expect a reply back.  Right?  But the King of the Universe is saying “I want to be your friend.”  He’s initiating, and you’re the one who can say “Yeah or neah” in this relationship.  What are you going to do?  The King of the Universe is knocking at the door, and he’s saying “I want to come in.”  Jesus stands outside the door, in Revelation, look there would you, let’s turn to the book of Revelation.  Revelation chapter 3, and we’ll look at verse 20.  And listen to the words of Our Savior, of the One who in chapter 1 is described as glowing, his head and his hair are like white wool, white as snow, and his eyes are like a flame of fire, and his feet are burnished like bronze, bronze that’s been caused to glow in the furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters, like the ocean waves crashing down upon the rocks.  And in his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, I mean, this is the vision that John had in chapter 1 of the awesomeness of Jesus Christ [as he is now, and forever].  And it says, at that point John says, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as a dead man.”  And the Lord had to lay his hand on him, and say, ‘Don’t be afraid, I’m the first and the last, the Living One, and I was dead, and behold I’m alive forevermore’, and he lifts him up.  John wasn’t thinking ‘Oh my buddy, oh my friend.’  He’s thinking ‘I’m a dead man!’  But now the Lord initiates this relationship, and in chapter 3 we read about the Lord knocking, and he says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  And if anyone hears my voice and will open the door, I will come in to him, and I will eat with him, and he [or she] with me.”  Now, I’ve already described to you what it meant to eat with someone in this [Middle Eastern] culture.  Jesus Christ is saying that he wants to come into your life, and he wants to have intimate fellowship with you.  For those of you who [already] know him, he wants to bring you into that inner circle of relationship with him.  He wants you to be his friend.  He wants to tell you what’s on his heart.  And for those of you who do not know Jesus Christ in a personal way, Jesus Christ [Yeshua haMeshiach for our Jewish friends] wants to come into your life, and he wants to give you a brand new beginning.  He wants to come into your life and he wants to be your friend forever.  Jesus is coming to you, and you might think ‘Oh man, I could never approach him, I don’t want anything to do with the God thing, you know, I don’t want anything to do with the Jesus thing’, and that’s because you feel like you’re approaching somebody that you’re unworthy to approach.  But what if he came down to you, and he says, ‘You know what?  I like you, I like you.  In fact, I like you to the point that, you didn’t know this, but I know that someday you’re gonna face hell, and I don’t want you to have to do that, and so I took it for you, I died for you, I paid the price for your sin in order that you might live, that you might have eternal life.’  And that’s what the Good News of the message of Christianity [or Messianic Judaism] is all about, that Jesus (or Yeshua) is coming to you, and he’s saying ‘I want a friendship with you.  I want to know you, I want to be your best friend.’  The Bible says in Proverbs “there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother”, and it is speaking prophetically of Jesus Christ.  And it’s not a mistake that you’re here right now [or reading this right now], it’s not a coincidence [rabbis say that with God there is no such thing as ‘coincidence’] that you’re listening to this [or reading this] because you need a friend that’s closer than a brother.  You need a friend that’s gonna stick by you through thick and thin, somebody who won’t leave you when the going gets rough and tough, but somebody whose going to hang in there with you, and that person is Jesus Christ.  He said himself, “I will never leave you or forsake you.  I am with you all the days, even to the end of the earth.”  He is not going to leave you, if you will let him be your friend.  But you note here, it says “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”  It’s interesting that earlier he says “I hold the keys”.  He could get in the door.  You may have the door locked to God right now---out of fear, out of anger [I know a precious girl who has the door locked out of anger, for what has happened to her all her life, from before birth to now, so there is in a sense, justifiable anger, at least in her eyes], out of rebellion---you may have that door locked.  Let me tell you right now, he’s got the key, that’s no problem to him.  But you know what?  He’s not gonna force himself in.  I suppose he could knock the door down, but he’s not gonna do that either.  No one has ever been forced into friendship with Jesus Christ.  No one has ever been forced into salvation.  It’s a gift. I don’t force people to take their Christmas presents, do you?  I don’t say “Here’s your present, you gotta take it, or else!”, click, you know the gun’s at your head.  I mean, you know when you really understand how neat something is, you’re gonna grab it and take it of your own volition, of your own freewill.  And here is Jesus Christ saying “I like you, I want you to be my friend.”  You know, I think right now God is calling some of you into fellowship with his Son, right now [cf. John 6:44, coupled to Revelation 3:20].  I hope this is beginning to help you see that he wants to be your friend, that God is opening your eyes right now.  And you can hear him knocking, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hear my voice and open the door”, hear my voice.  What do you suppose he’s saying?  Well I could tell you some of the things he said to people.  He’s come to people who are really, really hurting, and he’s said “Come to me and I’ll give you rest.”  Could he be saying that at the door to you right now?  I know what he said to people who had done some really bad things, he said “I don’t condemn you.  Go and sin no more.”  I know that Jesus said, “I can forgive all manner of sin and blasphemy.”  ‘I’ll forgive you, I will forgive you.  I know that Jesus says “Whoever comes to me, I will never, no,  never cast away.”  Do you think that maybe he’s saying that at the door to you right now?  I know one thing he’s saying, is your name.  He knows you.  And he knows right where you’re at right now.  And his heart is a heart of love.  He’s saying ‘I like you, I love you, I died for you, I paid the debt, I paid the bill for your sins.  Accept me.  If anyone hear my voice and open the door, I’ll come in, and I’ll be your friend forever.’  Reach out to that doorknob.  Turn it, and let Jesus Christ into your life.  Lets pray…[double transcript of two sermons given by Pastor J. Mark Martin on Matthew 5:6, Calvary Community Church, 12612 N. Black Canyon Hwy, Phoenix, AZ  85029]

 

Related links:

http://www.unityinchrist.com/galatians/Galatians5-1-26.htm